


rotting in vain

by badwltch



Category: Original Work
Genre: Body Horror, Horror, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Short, Southern Gothic, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 07:09:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16236728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwltch/pseuds/badwltch
Summary: who controls us digs our graves for us, and that too shall cost us our toil and our lives.





	rotting in vain

A love letter

The oak trees with their old, thick trunks whisper to each other and to the crickets and cicadas beside them in the brush and in the grass and in the little alcoves situated in their above-ground roots. The air is wet, soaked with a hot, steamy fog that makes it a struggle to breath fresh air. Sweat dripped down my chest through the layers of my clothing, despite that the sun has died away and the earth has let go of the heat as the crescent moon rose through the scattering rain clouds.  
I can hear the breathy whispers from the old, crumbling white church in whose graveyard so many of my ancestors are buried. A decade ago, I walked its very floors though they were empty of pews after the last century of weathering. The wood was old, rotting even after all its effort and capacity for endurance. Now the grass was poking holes up past the stairs. My heart ached for the lives that all were dead and gone, having lifted themselves upwards with the trembles of the wind and songs of the birds, or dug themselves a hole deep underground. Heaven and Hell are too alike. The people in both are similar, the sanctions are so similar. One is just sugar-coated, while the other is accused while both are guilty to an equilibrium. Sometimes I think I’d rather stay and listen to the birds instead and bask in the dappled evening sun.  
By the grave of my dead aunt who nobody ever knew, I start digging. I don’t know why. The dirt is moist, but not quite sloppy and muddy enough to slide back into the hole I’ve presently made. I feel as if I’m in a dream, and I can’t get out. I’m banging on the wooden coffin lid, screaming my lungs out ‘til they’re bare. I know I’m going to die, I know I’m going to die and there’s nothing I can do about it. I know I’ve done something terrible and I can’t go back on it, I can’t. I didn’t even mean to do it. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to, so why did I?  
I’m six feet from the ground now, standing in the hole I’ve dug. There is no coffin, and there are no tiny bones or remnants of cartilage from the little one. This time it wasn’t my doing. I was right. I told them I wasn’t lying. But no one would believe me, anyway. I can scream at them, I can present all the evidence, I can shake their shoulders, but they don’t care about the truth.  
I can smell their tainted breath emanating from the wet grass and warm flowers. Their sickly sweet touch sends shivers down my spine and makes me feel sticky all over. I don’t want to be here anymore. Do I leave that part of me here, or stay and heal to take it back with me? I am lost without it. I don’t know what to do. I’m a wanderer forever, my home is not my home and never will be, I am an outsider within my own family. I do not belong here at this church, or at this graveyard. My ancestors do not want my respect. They do not want me here.  
I want to be gone, out of this alcove of suffocating heat where the words are dripping with venom and the trees still in mourning for those who used to listen without distaste.  
They start with my feet first, determined to torment me until my last breath. They make sure to avoid pecking out my eyes, so that I can see myself dissolving in their vampire, cannibalistic beaks. Now my legs are gone, the birds are so plump and fat, their waste all over me. Solace no longer comes with the bird song, but with the crude croaks of the frogs and the snickering crickets. I do not know why I am here now, rotting on the ground, letting them tear strip by strip from me, why I don’t fight back except in salty tears that wash the dirt clean. Only now, no flowers are here to let me smell their sweet perfumes or gaze at their miraculous beauty. Not even the flowers want me now. I am disgusting, half-decayed, a slave, shackled by pain of death. But I’m going to die either way, so why not lie in this shallow grave dug just for me but clearly not by me? I would prefer to go by fire. It is the purest of the elements next to the freedom of the air. Alas, I am not pure according to your standards. Therefore I am not deserving of such a holy funeral.  
And now I cannot hear new words, or see beauty in the world any longer. The last thing I saw was the bright stars in the night sky as they were so long ago. They have taken from me all that I found dear. I can still get away, I tell myself. I can still grow, and forget about all of this, I tell myself. But fear keeps me shackled, glued to the ground that I was born on and that, now, I’ll die on.  
I loved you. I really did. And maybe I still do. I so wish that you would love me back. I so wish your words weren’t hollow, and that I wasn’t your porcelain, red-headed doll to be tossed about and displayed as if I was only just that. But even then, I’m dirty. I wear the rags you give me, instead of the pretty dresses you wish I wore. You detest me, you tear from me every ounce of strength I have. I lie here on this old grave, living here, dying here, with only the birds to keep me company. And you do nothing but smirk and laugh. I did not deserve this, I did not!  
I will tell you this: that I am no doll. I am restricted to no such dress or role. I will not bow to your assignments because of what runs through my veins and what is made in my body. I will change it, and not only out of rebellion but because of what the Universe has somehow made me understand.  
But the Earth claims me in spite of this into her sickly sweet embrace once more. She goes into my phantom nose, my ghastly lip-less mouth, trickles through my bleached bones. Poison sumac with its ghastly pale berries sprouts up from the calcium and minerals of the moldy, rich soil. Do not suffer the same fate as I.

**Author's Note:**

> title from the song by korn


End file.
